OCDE teams with community partners to open a new Fit Kid Center in Santa Ana

This week, Lydia Romero-Cruz Elementary School in Santa Ana became the latest Orange County campus to host a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its brand new Fit Kid Center.

As we’ve previously reportedhere, Fit Kid Centers transform empty classrooms into engaging health and fitness rooms that can be used similar to computer labs. Each offers 30 minutes of fun, DVD-based exercise sessions, rotating small groups of students through a half-dozen self-directed stations that hone motor skills and promote overall fitness.

The center at Romero-Cruz was made possible by OCDE’s Move More Eat Healthy At School initiative with funding from the multi-agency Orange County Partnership to Improve Community Health, which in turn secured a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Santa Ana Unified Superintendent Rick Miller took part in the opening ceremony, which also featured Principal Erica Graves and dozens of students. You can check out some of the action in the video below, courtesy of the Santa Ana Unified School District’s Media Production team.

OCDE has now helped install approximately 20 Fit Kid Centers throughout the county and distributed more than 1,500 classroom Fit Kits, which can be used by elementary school teachers to facilitate quality P.E. lessons with little to no prep time.